Looking back, I guess I knew from the beginning that things would never have worked between us. There were always too many roadblocks, too many things to knock us off course and it was only a matter of time, three months, three days I didn't know but it was only a matter of time before things would end.
The day we met it was like the rain stopped falling and I was blinded by golden sunlight. He made me laugh harder than I had ever laughed before, I never thought I would ever be thankful to Professor Snape for anything but he made him my potions partner and I've never been more thankful for anything. He'd been so annoyed that I wouldn't be bossed around like his friends, I don't know how many times he rolled his silver eyes at me when I refused to do as I was told. We weren't friends but we were friendly to one another. Then one afternoon while we were preparing a potion for our homework he lost his temper with me, I don't know what I really did but he'd been in a bad mood since he'd arrived.
"Don't you want to pass this class?" He'd snapped at me, "Why don't you ever just do as you're told?"
I'd looked at him with a frown and my green eyes narrowed, "Because you never ask nicely." I told him, "It doesn't hurt to say please, or thank you." I think now that I was probably being childish, he was so focussed all the time he probably didn't even realise that he often spoke harshly and ordered me around. He'd brought a hand up to his forehead and gently rubbed it, obviously exasperated with me. I remember it made his hair stick up funny and that was why I had laughed.
"What are you laughing at now?" He'd asked and I pointed to his hair, it had been funny until he got mad at me for laughing. He started shouting at me and I stopped laughing. That was the first time he referred to me as a mudblood.
"Malfoy, calm down." I told him and picked up the next ingredient for our potion and dropped it into the boiling cauldron, "See I can help, just stop shouting." I wasn't a fan of raised voices and being called horrible names. I mostly took notes for the next half hour as he prepared the potion, I occasionally stirred it when he asked me too but I didn't speak and from the permanent scowl on his face I wasn't convinced he'd have replied if I did. I remember leaving the spare classroom with tears in my eyes, which should have been my first clue that he wasn't meant for me. I'd managed to not cry while we worked but I did cry after I left, I never told him that and the next time we had potions I acted like nothing had ever happened.
The second time he called me mudblood, I slapped him.
He froze in shock for a minute, his eyes wide as mine brimmed with tears and a red mark began to form on his left cheek.
"What the hell was that for?" He yelled once he was able to compose himself, he'd been rambling on without even paying much attention to what he was saying that he hadn't even realized what he'd called me.
"For calling me a mudblood." I told him as I wiped a fallen tear away with the sleeve of my cardigan. He apologised, said he didn't mean it but it didn't matter he couldn't take it back, couldn't unsay it. I must have hit him hard though, for the rest of the day there was a red hand print on his cheek and when I overheard people ask him what had happened he'd told them, "I was an idiot," Then looked over at me for a second before glancing away again.
He was nicer after that day, he spoke softer, said please more. We'd been working together for half of our fifth year at Hogwarts and though I still wouldn't call us friends we had managed to get onto first name terms. I'd laughed when he said my name for the first time,
"Mercury, your handwriting is terrible, how am I ever supposed to read this?" He asked as he shuffled through a pile of my papers, scribbled writing and a mess of doodles. It was an odd name but then my parents had always been eccentrics and most people just brushed over it but the way he said it was different, like he couldn't quite grasp how it was my name but gave it a go anyway.
"Most people just call me Mercy." I informed him and took the pile of papers away from him to point out what different things said. "I told you not to rely on my notes, Draco."
"That's still not really a name." He muttered and I laughed again, I always seemed to be laughing with him these days, like the first few times we had worked together, it was good.
Our love was slow, like a clear sky when the clouds start rolling in. He started standing closer to me as we worked, his shoulder brushing against mine or our hands touching when we would reach for ingredients. Then one day we were talking, not about the work but actually talking, about ourselves and our friends, about real things, he told me he wanted to be a doctor, or the wizard equivalent of a doctor and I told him about my passion for photography. He told me about his parents and how anti-muggle they were, he apologised again for all the times he'd called me a mudblood - sometimes when we were arguing it still slipped out and I'd hit him or thrown something at him, never very hard, just enough to let him know. I told him about how my mother died. We'd passed friends, somehow skipped over it to something closer and maybe that was one of our mistakes.
We'd been potions partners for two years, we occasionally spent time together outside of class and allotted homework hours, his friends didn't approve of me and I hadn't expected them too. My friends hadn't stuck around once they heard I was spending more time with him, his reputation had never been a good one. We were reading together in a back corner of the library, we sat close so we could share a book, we'd done it so many times before that I never turned the page too early or too slow. We finished the book and I stood up to put it back on the shelf and he'd followed me over to the stacks. I turned to look at him, he was a head taller than me and was standing so close. He lifted a hand and moved a strand of my dark blonde hair out of my eyes, then he kissed me. It lasted only a few seconds but it made my stomach flips, I'd always thought girls exaggerated when they said they felt sparks but in that moment I knew exactly what they meant.
After that it was like lightning had struck and we spent as much time together as we could, his friends objected to our relationship, mine told me I was stupid but we didn't let them break us. Our relationship was like being lost in the woods, each monster turned out to be just trees.
The first time I met his parents was at Christmas in seventh year, his father didn't like me and he made it pretty clear, his mother tried even though I know she would have preferred if he had picked a pureblood girl. It was a horrible Christmas but I wouldn't have changed a thing because it was my first Christmas with him. He bought me a camera for Christmas, a magical one that took polaroid's of things in black and white except us, when it took pictures of us we were always in screaming colour.
We spent the summer after seventh year at my house, my father was a wealthy muggle and though our house wasn't as big as Malfoy Manor it wasn't exactly small. I remember laying on a couch in a spare room somewhere, his arms wrapped around me as I lay with my eyes closed wrapped in his warmth, listening to an old record playing. I could feel him behind me reaching into his pocket and then he was putting something round my neck, I sat up and looked at the necklace he'd given me. It was silver with a little 'D' charm handing from it with an emerald green gem in the 'D's top corner. I'd never felt so happy and I kissed him for what felt like hours but was only minutes.
I pulled him up from the sofa and made him help me push the furniture out to the edges of the room, I turned the volume up slightly on the record player and took his hand. We danced until the record ran out of song and then we dance more to the silence.
The middle of summer brought us our first big fight in over a year. I started it though I don't remember what we were fighting about it had been enough for him to storm out of the house. I'd been angry, I should have followed him but I didn't. He showed up again hours later, neither of us said anything as we wrapped each other up in our arms and he rested his head on top of mine. I remember asking him if we were out of the woods yet, it had become my way of asking if the fight was over, if we were in the clear yet. I asked that question too many times over the next couple of years but for that one we watched the sun come up and all the while I was watching the beauty of a sunrise, you were looking at me like I was a sunrise myself.
Over the next year my father got sick, an incurable cancer and Draco stuck by me. When my father died I cried for days but he never let me cry alone. He moved into my fathers house with me and after months of tears I felt like I could smile again. I felt like we'd finally made it, there were no more monsters to stop us.
I remember the time I asked him to be a muggle for a day, he went pale at the thought but he agreed to it. I locked our wands in my father's safe and we spent the day doing muggle things, we went for a drive in my dad's old car, I'd forced you to learn to drive and you'd complained all the time but now you jumped at every chance to drive the car.
I remember when he hit the brakes too soon, it had caused an accident and we'd been in the middle of it. He'd cursed at me for taking his wand away but I didn't know that till after I'd woken up in a muggle hospital. The doctors told me I'd had to have twenty stitches on the back of my head, he'd come into my room at the hospital and yelled, called them butchers for what they'd done to me but he was crying and I knew he was blaming himself and I cried too, told him I'd heal. We left the hospital two days later in a taxi. It was early morning and the sun was rising but he wasn't watching it and I was watching him, he was my sunrise.
I remember when it really ended, the last fight had been the worst. We'd thrown things and said things that hurt, the house was a mess, shattered plates and glasses littered the floor from a half finished dinner, I'd broken a window when I'd thrown a paperweight at him and he'd broken a door when he slammed it too hard and the wood splintered. We could no longer take the heat and I walked out the front door saying, "I'm setting you free!"
When I finally came home in the early hours of the morning, he was gone. The house had been tidied, repairs had been done with magic I guess but he was gone and I was still broken. I cried until I fell asleep on the couch to the silence. He didn't come back, not for days or weeks or months. Until I had to accept he wasn't coming back and I was still lost in the woods.
I'm twenty five now and I haven't heard from him in four years. I still have the camera he gave me but now even I'm in black and white, I think I must have broken it at some point, I've dropped it a few times. I still wear his necklace, out of habit I think. I've heard that he actually became a doctor and that his father was sent to Azkaban for conspiring to bring back Voldemort, I wish I'd been there for him for that, his father was rarely a nice person but Draco loved him beyond words. The wizarding world developed a cure for the cancer that killed my father which was good because half a year ago I developed the same cancer. Today I'm visiting St Mungos hospital to collect my final dose of the potion that will cure me. I'm waiting for the doctor - my usual one is out sick today - to come in to the office to give me the potion but I'm stood at the window watching as the sunsets. I didn't hear anyone come in but a shoulder brushes against mine and I look up to see he's looking at me, same silver eyes, same messed up blonde hair. A silence passes between us then he speaks,
"Are we out of the woods yet?"
I've never done a one-shot before but I was listening to some Taylor Swift and got inspired. I hope you liked it, and that it made sense since I'm pretty sure I was rambling nonsense for a lot of it. Thanks for reading and please leave a review to let me know what you thought ~RainbowVeins